Graduation Speakers Opting for Safe, Unoffensive Topics

With burning issues in the news--terrorism, the Middle East and the Catholic Church sex-abuse scandal among them--a pundit should have plenty of material to expound upon in a university commencement speech.

Instead, UC Berkeley students invited freestyle skier Jonny Moseley, an Olympic gold medalist best known for acrobatic feats such as his “dinner roll” maneuver.

Moseley, a college dropout, urged students at the universitywide convocation to create their own personal definition of success, and not let their sense of well-being depend on the approval of others. By doing that, he said, “you will own your happiness.”

This graduation season, many commencement speakers in California and elsewhere are slaloming away from the great social issues of the day toward safer ground.

Every year, many orators opt for upbeat, inspirational themes rather than risk dampening the celebratory atmosphere with probing news commentary.

But this year, there is more to steer clear of.

“Who wants to have their commencement turn into a controversial, even belligerent, activity?” asked Robert A. Corrigan, president of San Francisco State University, which has been beset lately with tensions between pro-Israeli and pro-Palestinian students. “You want students to feel good about their experience at commencement.”

Thomas F. Daly IV, editor of the twice-monthly newsletter Vital Speeches of the Day, said that from what he has observed this month, “You don’t see commencement speakers tackling big issues.... You can sense an uncertainty in the speakers when they talk about the future.”

The one significant exception appears to be Sept. 11. Even when speakers address the terrorist attacks, however, they are focusing far less on the tragedy than on what it revealed about the importance of public service, tolerance and the American spirit.

This spring’s speakers may be drawing a lesson from Cal State Sacramento’s midyear commencement in December, when Sacramento Bee Publisher Janis Besler Heaphy voiced concern that the nation’s war on terrorism threatened to compromise basic American freedoms. Heaphy was booed so badly that she gave up and sat down before finishing.

Though a spokeswoman for Cal State Sacramento said the school didn’t make any changes because of the flap, the university last weekend returned to its previous format of holding separate ceremonies for each of its seven colleges, rather than one or two big ones. The largest college, Arts and Letters, had no guest commencement speaker.

Celebrities Are Being Featured on the Dais

Many other campuses are featuring celebrities on the dais.

“I notice a lot of universities going for the [Bill] Cosbys of the world,” said Father Paul Locatelli, president of Santa Clara University, a Jesuit school in Silicon Valley.

Cosby, the comedian and author, has picked up honorary degrees or spoken at an array of schools this month, including Drew University in New Jersey, Rice University in Houston, Springfield College in Massachusetts, Haverford College in Pennsylvania and the University of Pittsburgh’s regional campus in Johnstown, Pa.

At American University in policy wonk-rich Washington, D.C., actress Goldie Hawn took the stage.

Even serious, science-minded Caltech this year will have actor Alan Alda at its June 14 ceremony. This, however, is somewhat of a special case: Among other things, Alda has portrayed the late Caltech physicist and Nobel Prize winner Richard Feynman in a play about Feynman’s life, “QED.”

“We don’t see Alan Alda as a ‘MASH’ character. We see him as someone of real substance,” said Caltech President and Nobel laureate David Baltimore. “There’s certainly no conscious desire on our part to downplay the major issues of the day or to provide a sort of ‘comfort food’ for graduation.”

For his part, Alda, who also hosts a public television science program, “Scientific American Frontiers,” said he plans to talk about Feynman and the importance of communicating science to the public.

He said he isn’t planning on tackling any issues in the news.

Commencement “is an important event in the lives of the people you’re talking to. So then, do you get up in front of them and you say, ‘Here’s what I think about the corn subsidy?’ I don’t know if that’s really the right place to talk about that,” Alda said with a laugh.

Commencement season usually draws an army of politicians, public servants, authors and journalists to deliver addresses. Some of their speeches make news or even, on occasion, history.

Winston S. Churchill first warned of communism’s “iron curtain” descending on Eastern Europe during a 1946 commencement speech at Westminster College in Fulton, Mo. The next year, Secretary of State George C. Marshall, addressing Harvard University’s graduating class, outlined what became known as the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe.

So far, this doesn’t look like a season for the history books.

At San Francisco State, where a pro-Israeli peace rally this month led to a tense confrontation with pro-Palestinian counterdemonstrators, keynote speaker Nancy Pelosi, the minority whip in the House of Representatives, didn’t utter a word about the Middle East.

And although Santa Clara University has invited serious commencement speakers to this year’s ceremonies--a civil rights attorney and the founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center--the priest who is delivering a pre-commencement homily said he won’t dwell on the negative. Father Locatelli, who has written a newspaper column critical of the church in the sex-abuse scandal, said he would at most allude to it, and he doesn’t expect anyone else to broach the topic.

At Berkeley, the editorial page of the student paper ridiculed the selection of Moseley, and “Why Moseley?” was scrawled in chalk near the alumni association office. But Tuany Vo, president of the student group that brought in the skier, said, “We weren’t trying to run away from issues.”

“Mr. Moseley, as an athlete and as someone who represented this country in the Olympics, was the best one to speak to the students about being dedicated and achieving your goals,” Vo said.

Last year, Berkeley’s keynoter was former U.S. Atty. Gen. Janet Reno.

Chancellor Robert M. Berdahl pointed out at the ceremony, however, that Moseley and Reno had something in common: Both had hosted “Saturday Night Live.”

Even Journalist Steers Clear of the News

At USC’s main commencement ceremony May 10, author David Halberstam was the keynote speaker. But even Halberstam, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, steered clear of the news. Instead, the one-time Vietnam correspondent emphasized the importance of listening to “what your heart tells you to do” in pursuing a career.

Commencement, Halberstam said afterward, is a celebration, a time to focus on “old and abiding values,” not the latest depressing headline.

Not everyone has bought into a keep-it-safe safe approach.

Linda Wertheimer, a National Public Radio senior correspondent who spoke at a USC satellite ceremony for graduating journalism students, warned of the declining standards across much of American journalism. And she lashed out at the television networks for cutting their news staffs.

In an interview, Wertheimer said universities are the perfect forums for critical commentary.

“If you can’t say anything about anything at a university, where can you say it?” she asked. “I would think that it’s the point of the academy.”